Welcome to Chechnya (2020)

Film: Welcome to Chechnya (2020)

Director: David France

Oscar History: It seemed like a frontrunner for both Documentary & Visual Effects, but it missed in upsets on Oscar morning.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

A few weeks ago the "bakeoff" lists arrived from the Academy of the films shortlisted for a few different categories for the Academy Award, and one of the more striking films on the list was in Best Visual Effects.  Obviously in 2020-21 the biggest "delay until theaters" tactic for films that wanted to wait to release their films due to the pandemic were giant blockbusters, and so as a result there aren't a lot of Visual Effects-oriented films that were even released.  While pictures like Tenet and The Midnight Sky may have made the list in a traditional year, other movies were on the list that would've been forgotten in a normal contest, like barely-on-the-pop-culture-register pictures Bloodshot and Love & Monsters.  By far the strangest film, though, was a documentary feature called Welcome to Chechnya, which became the first documentary to ever be shortlisted for the prize.  This isn't a first that reads less "why'd this take so long?" and more "how does a documentary have visual effects?" and when many Oscar pundits quickly started to predict it for an actual nomination over more traditional fare like Birds of Prey, I thought I needed to check it out before Monday.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoiler Alerts) The film is focused on the horrendous genocide that is happening in Russia, and specifically Chechnya, where LGBTQ+ citizens are rounded up and murdered with the tacit endorsement of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the enthusiastic support of the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzen Kadyrov.  This genocide made news in 2017, and in the years since several countries, particularly Canada, have taken in refugees from Chechnya, while others (specifically the United States under President Trump) have pointedly refused, doing nothing to stop Putin & Kadyrov from murdering their citizens in cold blood.  The movie follows the efforts to relocate LGBTQ+ Chechen & Russian citizens into other parts of the world, and in particular focuses on one man who actually brought the story to the mainstream by filing charges in Russia much to the risk of his own personal safety.

The film is horrifying, and really shows just how cruel Vladimir Putin's regime is, and how the comparisons of him to past despots like Joseph Stalin are not hyperbolic at all-he is a man that is willing to murder anyone that gets in his way.  Watching this film, you see how truly terrifying (from an American perspective, as that's what I sport as a citizen) President Trump's embrace of Putin was-he basically was saying that LGBTQ+ lives don't matter, and that he was more-than-willing to look past the deaths if it meant helping Trump line his pockets & fuel cash to the oil industry.

I always struggle with how to grade documentaries, as I always want to give five-stars to the issues I agree with just because I want them to be solved & I want people to talk about them (people should talk about this, and President Biden should incorporate an end to this genocide in his policy negotiations with Russia, as well as to start taking in LGBTQ+ refugees who are threatened by the Putin/Kadyrov government).  The film from a technical aspect is a bit too detached.  The movie stays somewhat clinical in the ways it approaches its subjects, particularly toward the end when we want to know the human aspects of one couple's relationship (which seems to be on rockier territory as a result of one of them making their fight more public).  I understand why this happened, as these are real people in genuinely horrifying circumstances (their safety is most important), but I did feel like I left not knowing them in the way I would have from films with a similar struggle in the past.

The visual effects are fascinating, but also leave me conflicted if impressed.  In order to protect the anonymity of the people in the film, rather than just focusing on more tried methods of blurring their faces or changing their voices, the filmmakers digitally alter their faces with the visages of other people using "deep fake" technology.  Essentially we don't actually see the subjects, but other figures, though when the one person goes public, we see the guise dropped, understanding how extraordinary this technology is.  You can always tell there's something slightly off in who the figures are (there is something of a haze around the figures, especially their necks), but it's more difficult than you would normally find in past films & honestly more impressive than some of the technology we've seen in movies like Rogue One and Captain Marvel partially because we don't know what these people look like in the same way we do Carrie Fisher or Samuel L. Jackson (making identifying the deep fake more difficult).  This is the rare situation where visual effects are used as a humanitarian tool, but I'll admit-deep fake technology freaks me out.  The recently circulating video of Tom Cruise scared the crap out of me, and in a world where much of the population can't handle established scientific facts, what happens when you start throwing out false, realistic videos to the unsuspecting masses?  This is obviously something of a luddite attitude, but I haven't come to terms with how I feel quite yet, and so while I am impressed, and this is using this technology for the right reasons, I'm not entirely convinced I like the use of this technology at all until we've found rules-of-acceptability around it.  If this is nominated for the Oscars (which I will be predicting it will be), deciding this for the OVP will be a challenge, I'm stating right now.